EU Conditionality and Minority Rights: A Comparative Study on Romania and Turkey

Minority rights protection has been one of the significant litmus tests for the success of the EU conditionality. In Romania, the accession process helped transform key minority policies and improved the records whereas in Turkey, the traditional minority policies still linger despite the small changes in early 2000s. This paper aims to analyze how EU conditionality in minority related policies has become successful in Romania but not in Turkey through the application of the external incentives model to the cases to see under which circumstances minority rights measures were adopted and refused. The model assumes that the EU conditionality can be expected to improve minority conditions when the credibility of conditionality is higher, the conditions are determinate and the domestic adoption costs are lower in target states. Therefore, the paper attempts to test this model’s assumptions and expectations within the cases of Romania and Turkey. The paper argues that although the veto players and domestic adoption costs primarily determine the success of the EU conditionality in minority rights in target states, the EU conditionality can, to an extent, undermine the power of resistant political forces by credible membership prospect and clear conditions.